| | |  | Maritime Security | Home » » Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice | | | | | | | Description: | | Jonathan Jay Pollard, an intelligence analyst working in the U.S. Naval Investigative Service's Anti-Terrorist Alert Center, systematically stole highly sensitive security secrets from almost every major intelligence-gathering agency in the United States. Over the course of eighteen months in the mid 1980s, he took and subsequently sold to Israel more than one million pages of classified material, enough to fill a six-by-ten-foot room stacked six feet high. No other spy in the history of the United States has stolen so many secrets, so highly classified, in such a short period of time. Ronald J. Olive, the author of this book was the assistant special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the Washington office of the Naval Investigative Service who led the whirlwind investigation against Pollard. Olive interrogated Pollard and garnered the confession that led to his arrest in November 1985 and eventual life sentence. During the twenty plus years that Pollard has spent in prison, many questions have arisen about the case because it never went to trial and so much information surrounding it remains classified. Most of the books and articles that have been written about Pollard denounce his life sentence as unjust. This book tells the other side of the story. It is an account from deep inside the espionage investigation that gives details of Pollard's confession immediately following his arrest and describes Pollard's interaction with the author before and during the time suspicion about his activities was mounting. Revealed are countless other details that have never before been made public. Calling the Pollard story an extreme case of a counterintelligence failure, Olive writes that mistaken assumptions and leadership failures enabled Pollard to ransack America's defense intelligence long after he should have been fired. The author hopes the vital insights his book offers will serve as a lesson in history and prevent similar problems in the future and provide an antidote to the uncertainty that has fueled speculation, rumor, and lies. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Ronald J. Olive | | Hardcover:
| 299 pages | | Publisher:
| US Naval Institute Press | | Publication Date:
| 2006-10 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1591146526 | | Package Length:
| 9.1 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.3 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.2 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.2 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 20 reviews |
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| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
79 of 89 found the following review helpful:
 Superb book about a greatly misunderstood spy caseSep 28, 2006
By maskirovka
Some people like to call Jonathan Pollard "America's Dreyfus." Pollard's own supporters tried to get the Israeli government to accord him "prisoner of Zion" status (i.e. formal designation as someone suffering persecution for Zionist activities).
If you read Olive's recounting of Pollard's sordid little life and his sordid betrayal of the US, you will quickly see that he is neither. Dreyfus was an innocent man framed as a traitor by anti-semites in France. Prisoners of Zion are people like Natan Scharansky and others in the Soviet Union who suffered imprisonment and worse for expressing their Jewish identity and a desire to emigrate.
What Olive's book shows Pollard to be is something much less heroic, namely a grubby little man who deliberately and willfully betrayed over a million pages of top secret and secret documents to a foreign power.
Now, the refrain to this is "Israel is a US ally." Olive's response (and mine) is that it doesn't matter. The specific laws that Pollard broke don't prohibit conveying classified information to US enemies. No, the laws prohibit conveying classified information to any foreign power.
Israel is a foreign power, and believe it or not, sometimes its interests differ from those of the US. Therefore, Pollard, a lowly GS-12, had no right to do what he did.
Also, people shouldn't be fooled by Pollard's representation of himself as an Israeli patriot. Olive shows that Pollard approached four other nations and offered classified information to them. One of them was Pakistan! But it was the Israelis that took Pollard up on his offer. But I have no doubt that if the Pakistanis or South Africans had taken him up on his offers and the money had been right, Pollard would have been working for them instead of Israel.
I really do believe that before anyone becomes emotionally vested in the "plight" of "America's Dreyfus," they would do well to read Olive's book.
42 of 46 found the following review helpful:
Riviting AccountDec 18, 2006
By Kenneth P. Albertson
"Ken A"
This case has become politically charged more than any other spy case on record. As a result, there is a flood of misinformation, primarily on the internet, which attempts to obscure the facts of the case. Mr Olive, by virtue of his role as investigator into the matter is in a unique position to separate the actual facts from the spin, which came later. I have had an interest in this case and have followed it since it came to public attention. Mr Olive's book is the first objective account (from the governments viewpoint) that I have seen, and I found it to be an intresting account that tallied with what facts I had learned previously from multiple sources.
Pollards behaviour was bizarre at times, to say the least, and should have gotten him "weeded out" several times in the course of his career as a spy. The lesson here, of lax "vetting" and even more lax physical security, seems to be repeating itself lately at the White Sands complex, with uncontrolled access and highly classified material finding its way out the door. I hope that this book will find an audience that will not be dissuaded by "spinmeisters" attempting to turn a well paid spy into a self-sacrificing hero.
25 of 27 found the following review helpful:
Trapping the SpyMar 16, 2007
By Ralph G. Watermeier
"ralphie@bealenet.com"
"Luck had nothing to do with it". How many times have we heard that statement? In the case of Jonathan Pollard,luck had EVERYTHING to do with it. Having spent 12 years in Army counterintelligence, and almost 30 years in the security field myself, I was amazed at how often luck favored him. Eventually, Pollard's luck ran out. The story of his downfall, as told by the man who was there, is a fascinating tale of how the true counterspy does his job. In spite of its length, this is a fast, compelling read; lucidly written. The interactions among the various agencies involved, including the FBI, US Navy, and the CIA, were fascinating to follow, and allowed the reader to begin to understand the mind-set of those agencies. A word of warning, however; do not start this book late in the evening, because you will not want to put it down until you finish.
17 of 18 found the following review helpful:
Front to cover in one sittingMar 16, 2007
By Arthur Grix
"bargain seeker"
This is an excellent documentary from someone who actually "was there". No spin or cover-up is offered here. The author tells even the most embarrassing details of a case that should be studied by all investigative branches of our government in hope of preventing this from occurring again.
There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Pollard has received the punishment he deserved. I would discount those who would attempt to downplay the harm that he did to our country. They are naively accepting his self-portrayal as a protagonist of the Israeli nation.
20 of 22 found the following review helpful:
BEST SPY BOOK-MUST READFeb 23, 2007
By Jeanne
A fast paced, well written book by an author who personally interacted with Pollard and who was intimately involved in the investigation.
Olive was the NCIS agent at the heart of the Pollard investigation and for the first time exposes decade old myths about this notorious spy case. Olive provides a candid, and sad but true account, of how Pollard was able to walk off with 360 cubic feet (1 million pages) of classified documents. He sold them over to Israel-a foreign government.
Olive articulates how blatant Pollard was at stealing our nation's top secrets, and how his strange and bizarre behaviors were ignored from the beginning. It tells how he manipulated the system time and time again and how our intelligence agencies were ransacked. He exposes how the navy and the intelligence community, in trying to give a guy the "benefit of the doubt" and in some cases "another chance" made bad decisions and overlooked things that "just weren't right." Pollard should have been fired long before he became a spy and should never have gone down in the history books.
In his first book, Ronald Olive takes us deep inside the espionage investigation where "Murphy's Law" was always one step ahead and the confession he eventually garnered. He tells of how Anne and Pollard fell in love, what her involvement was, and how her actions-at the end of this spy game-expedited their arrest. A story that some might say is "stranger than fiction." Sad as this tale is we can learn from the lessons it teaches us and should be mandatory reading-especially for law enforcement agencies.
Revealed in the epilogue is most unbelievable and another revelation to me and a scary one, is how Pollard himself, through the years has manipulated the intelligence community and the media (and still is) into believing he is a sufferer for a cause-an Israeli patriot. This is simply not the case. Jonathan Pollard is a traitor to his country and is right where he belongs.
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